Day 6 - July 9
Sunny, 20C

Yesterday was a long day and we stayed up well past midnight to photograph the setting sun. None of us want to be the first to get up this morning and we sleep in as much as possible. Finally, the rising sun heats the tents to the point where its no longer bearable and we roust ourselves. Our destination today is The Gap, only about 7 Km distant. We stop on river right where the Gap widens again to do some fishing. The only fish that seem interested are some pike which we put back. The Golden Eagle nest high on the cliff on river right is still active. We have lots of time to find our campsite for today, so we decide to paddle downstream a bit and explore. We stop in several places, but don't find anything that appeals to us greatly, though there's fresh evidence of wolves in the sand. The tracks are very fresh, we must have just missed them.

A little farther down, we find some possible tent sites that others have used before based on some visible saw cuts on dead trees near shore. The location isn't great and we decide not to set up camp, but go for a short hike instead. In the distance, there's a sow grizzly with two cubs feeding in the grasses across a tundra bog. We watch them through long lenses and binoculars until they disappear over a ridge. We arrive back to our canoes in time to meet the two people we saw at a distance on the portage last night, a guy and a gal on their way to Baker Lake. We chat for a little while and they move on. Deb is still taking pictures behind me and the boys are having a lot of fun playing in the sand.

Once Deb rejoins us, we decide to paddle back upstream and check out a site on the left shore of the Gap. Before reaching our intended site, we stop to explore the extensive beach on river left. We ran into some large herds of caribou at this location last trip, we we've seen no sign of them yet on this trip. Just as we're about to get back in the canoes, Dan and Mike from yesterday come through the Gap in their Pakboat and we chat again. Before leaving them yesterday, we'd talked about the rapids they'd be encountering once they started downstream from the Clarke junction. They'd remembered that I said we'd gone river right on our last trip, but they must not have heard me when I said we'd be stopping to scout the rapid because the water levels were much different this time. When they got to the river, they were starting to set up for river right, but realized that it wasn't a good option. Instead, the gritted their teeth and aimed for the passage through the large waves in the center of the river. They were both completely amazed at how well the Pakboat handled the rough waves. The flex in the hull rides through that kind of stuff with ease.

Mike and Dan from New York

We set up our tents on a flat area of tundra and leave the food packs, the bug tent and the canoes on the beach at the base of the cliff. It's a very nice site and we have a great view of the eagle nest across the river. There's a very appealing sunset.